Salmanticani

Salmanticani (sc. theologi), a collection of theological "Summae" emanating from the college of Discalceate Carmelites at Salamanca, and highly esteemed in the Roman Catholic Church. The work, inl arrangement and execution, is wholly in the style of Thomas Aquinas, and its teaching is emphatic in defending the views of the Angelical Doctor to the utmost, particularly with reference to the doctrine of grace. Its authors directed their argument especially against the system of Molina, SEE MOLINA, LUIS, which was then a subject of controversy. In this course they were supported by the whole weight of the University of Salamanca, which not only clung to the Thomist doctrines in their utmost strictness, but whose faculty bound itself with a unanimous oath to present only the doctrines of Augustine and Aquinas in their public lectures. A work containing the philosophical system of Aquinas had previously been issued by the Barefooted Carmelites of the College of Alcala, under the title Complutensis Artium Cursus, which served as a preliminary to the Salmantican theology. The authors of the above works are not definitely known, though Antonius, in Bibl. Hispan., mentions a Carmelite father Antonius as the principal author of both a statement which is disproved by the preface to the Theology. The first volume of the Salmantican theologians appeared in 1631, and nine volumes are now known to exist (Pfaff, Introd. in Hist. Theol. Literar. p. 203, mentions ten), the last of which contains the tract De Incarnatione.

A smaller work on moral theology, Cursus Theol. Moralis (Venet. 1728, complete in 6 vols.), was published by the same order and school, whose authors were, without exception, Probabilists. SEE PROBABILISM. Their names are given in the book. The work has been highly commended by Roman Catholic theologians in the department of morals, e.g. by Gury.